I know we all have our own grievances with how things have turned out but I’d be interested to hear what’s bothering you the most?
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I could boil it down to (primarily) 3 things:
- Failure to Listen. The ways in which many members of the community have warned MaidSafe about disastrous decisions (e.g. flooding the market with emissions, greatly inflating the circulating supply in a short amount of time, not putting in guardrails to ensure node operators adopt updates, failing to ensure broader token access, refusing to prevent gaming of rewards, etc.), but MaidSafe would first ignore, then defensively complain, only to sometimes belatedly accept they were wrong / make a change to fix a problem that wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place.
- Lack of Transparency. The fact that things that were promised are not delivered with minimal—if any—explanation, and if belatedly delivered, not adequately supported (e.g. partnerships, hackathons, general marketing, etc.)
- Refusal to Focus. The persistent tinkering and chasing of buzzword-y, pie-in-the-sky features (currently it’s anything AI related) instead of just delivering the basics that are needed for a healthy network first, and growing / optimizing second.
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We can also argue that it may be hard to deliver big change from day 1 too.
As long as data uploaded via portals remains accessible/usable directly, I’m fairly comfortable with it. However, it worries me if/when that data can only be viewed after being augmented by middlemen sites.
That said, even folks using autonomi as a backend on some centralised site is at least investment in the network. If the broad data comes first, followed by native apps later, it is at least a foot in the door.
I know parts of the dream still feel distant right now. The journey wasn’t as direct or as swift as hoped. There is still room for positivity though and that could start to snowball towards larger adoption.
It may take a while for the big token valuations to materialise though, if they ever do. Reality has certainly checked the project and remains unconvinced.
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Thanks for responding and I would only disagree with the refusal to focus point. I think the team are really focussed on getting an MVP and as far as I am aware it’s only David working on the “Pie in the sky” features.
This does really get to me and sometimes makes me think I’m going crazy😂
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This is not on behalf of Maidsafe or Autonomi, but my personal opinion below:
This is not a simple project by any means, its a ton of requirements (technical and functional), and at same time, one needs to keep the engineering and design principles as simple as possible.
One cannot publicly see the level off analysis, review, internal discussions, and all that and more that happens day in and day out. Its intense, and everyone is contributing at 100% or more effort continuously internally. Its been like this for as long as I have participated with the team members directly.
We will get there, and we will for sure! Between, the current code base, and future R&D efforts by David on sarosa, it will happen… its only a matter off time…
There have been so many technical obstacles from the beta rewards period (and even before then) to now, you simply cannot list all off it on one page, and yet team continues to tackle them.
One cannot expect everything on day one, and resources are limited in the sense that there is no magical infinite amount off dollars to spend on every increasing team size.
There is so much that goes on behind the scenes, between application code base, infrastructure code base, emulations off network topology, analytics comparison reports, and more… and all off this continues to expand in scope to further enrich the ability to do A&B tests, discover bugs prior to release, or rule out certain design decisions quantitatively properly.
Its easy to criticize, but my personal opinion is technology has to be stable and operating before any large scale marketing efforts. I am not a business or marketing person, but that’s my personal opinion.
Also, happy holidays to everyone on the forum, cheers!
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I’d also be interested in @blvd ‘s views on this.
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Well it surely has a been a disappointing year from a price perspective and I agree it has been hard to see launch with the flood of coins onto the market without any real marketing to get more buy pressure to offset these new coins… hopefully even taking us higher. Maybe they tried, but not enough. Maybe the weak Altcoin market this year has also been a major factor. Any other post bitcoin halving year in previous cycles would have been a different story. Maybe the big year is 2026? It’s really hard to tell.
We really just need a stable, fast and reliable network, with zero loss of data.
A question for the devs here that have criticism for the current situation of the network. Have you considered or could potentially consider forking the network? Or is that too big of a job at the moment?
I still appreciate all the Maidsafe teams hard work, and it is really great to see something launched and slowly improving. I’m hoping for them to get us where it needs to go, but we have been waiting sooo long.
From my many years of studying money, economics, gold, bitcoin, etc I have been concerned the soundness of the token hasn’t been thought through properly, and there is a lot of wishful thinking without really understanding supply/demand, inflation, and true value. Hopefully I’m wrong about that.
Fingers crossed 2026 is the year the network shows it’s true value and demand for the network and token comes hard.
I do really appreciate the positive outlook voices here like @Traktion and @DavidMc0. They are very much needed to keep a balanced outlook on what is happening and what is coming in the short term, especially @Traktion who is clearly putting a lot of effort into building on the network just as many others are.
Here’s to a more positive 2026. Fundamentally we have clearly had a lot of positives for 2025. Let’s hope the token price reflects that eventually.
Cheers and happy new year!
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This, I think, is why MaidSafe needs business and marketing people with proven track records of success.
Wishing everyone a happy (successful) New Year!
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I am not sure why that particular line from my entire post was highlighted, out of everything I said.
I did not defend, counter, or quote any of your statements (they are your personal opinion).
I don’t think you needed to quote my statement (as an engineer) to make the marketing or business hiring case even more appealing.
I was only shedding light to the community from the technical perspective as an engineer on the fact that there have been so many technical challenges that have been faced to get us to where we are today, and is it enough for minimal stability for the network? Not Yet. Are we closer than we were a year ago? Yes. Will we get there? Yes.
People are not appreciate off just how much effort has gone in just to get to where we are today, and if that’s not meeting expectations for any individual… well, they can choose to be either be content or not be content. Only the individual controls their own reaction and attitude to the situation. It is what it is.
I will leave it at that, and no more on this topic from my side.
Overall, I am excited for 2026! 
. Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday period!
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Price goes up a little, and suddenly all the hardcore “fundamentals-only” people and the marketing hype crowd come crawling out. Is the price really up right now? It’s still down to one-tenth of what it was a year ago.
No one can predict the price. If that were possible, everyone writing posts here should be holding at least 200 Bitcoin, shouldn’t they?
At the very least, insisting with absolute confidence that your price prediction is correct is a lie.
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That’s simply untrue. For those who have poured countless (unpaid) hours into supporting this project, that is exceptionally untrue.
Are the technical aspects of building this network challenging? Yes, no one is disputing that. However, that’s not a valid reason or explanation for the state of things today or the way things have been run—particularly in the last 18 to 24 months.
I wish I could say my intent was to “make the marketing or business hiring case even more appealing,” but to make a case I’d first have to believe that what I wrote was meant to affect change (which I don’t see as likely). You clicked reply to a post I made. I, in turn, responded to a specific point you made. Like you, I shared my opinion. People frequently quote excerpts of what I write in their replies. I don’t take offense in it. It simply highlights to what, specifically, they are responding.
To be clear, I don’t think the engineers—both those who have long since left as well as those currently staffed—who have labored to build this network bare responsibility for the present state of things.
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I was drafting up a response to your response above carefully, but after re-reading my draft, I deleted it all. Its best I avoid going further off topic, and its best to leave my opinion of your latest response to myself.
To be clear to the community and you, my response was to both you and the community in general, which was triggered by your original comments.
To the community in general, I see whats coming from a technical perspective both in current code base and saorsa, and it excites me. 
.
I am optimistic, on-wards to 2026! .
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I find your post terrifying on several levels, which probably means my emotion, expectation and disappointment control is not good enough. Oughta try harder, clap along louder and hope for the best much longer.
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My last few posts have been talking about the technical perspective, the technical efforts, and the technical complexity off this project, and that is my personal opinion regarding some of the negative commentary on this thread. That’s all.
If some folks on the forum want to take partial sentences out of context, which may or may not include a typo or a missed word in sentence, and then overall highlight them , then so be it.
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Many agree and support what you say on the matter.
A thing I’ve learned during the years on the forum getting stuck in endless discussion loops with people for different reasons, sometimes the superior way is to just say what you need to say and not care about the response, if it risk to lead to unproductive loops.
Just let the words speak for themselves.
Wish the best for you, the team, community and the project, may 2026 be fruitful.
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dirvine said (in the ‘Cord) he’s working 18-19 hours per day, while everyone else (me included) is complaining for the same amount of time. But I guess I’m just an altcoin shiller and should be jailed. (And hey maybe that’s true if I’ve ended up contributing to people buying in at higher prices who then have lost it [for now]; though, my extreme hodler self “knows” it’ll go back up there. If there’s something still heavily being worked on, then this extreme vision still has a place.) That said, I’ve kind of fallen off from the sheer perseverance for so long, but that’s also happened to me with other topics I used to keep track of religiously every week for a decade or more, so maybe something will bring me back.
People may ask why I’m optimistic. It’s needed with something revolutionary like this. And, as a side effect, that lets negativity and realism go by the wayside. So, now, the cause and effect of negativity and realism having been suppressed is coming around, now that “failure” has been perceived (weirdly enough: amidst simultaneously so-much continued trailblazing). But I feel like people are now being too realistic and pessimistic… for a network that’s already supposed to be impossible, right? So come on, dream again a little. (Not to suppress the negativity and realism again which should be taken as learning experience.)
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What happened here in the last 24 hours, folks, is exactly why the team is no longer actively participating in this forum. It’s like you don’t want them to interact with you.
I’m genuinely sorry about that, Shu, and thank you for sharing your personal opinion and insight. I appreciate it, and I’m sure many on the forum do. It’s unfortunate that those who appreciate all the effort you’re putting in and who understand why certain decisions are being made are the silent majority.
Most of the people here complaining about the state of things have a technical background. They all know how engineering works and how things can go, and they’re probably not close to building something as innovative as the Autonomi network, especially in one of the most difficult crypto legal environments in the world for over a decade now.
I also see the progress that has been made, and it excites me too. Hats off to the team. Thank you to you and the entire team for making it happen, we’ll get there eventually. 
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I just want to write a quick reply to you in particular, @Sotros25, because I was there for only a fraction of the time you spent countless hours supporting the Safe Network. I know how committed you’ve been, and I’ve also seen how extremely unfair the team’s interactions with you must have felt. It was almost as if every contribution you tried to make, for free, I might add, had to be defended and made you feel like a burden to the team rather than a contributor. And you didn’t deserve that. You made the right decision to step away.
But when I look back on it, probably for my own peace of mind, I can also see why it happened the way it did, and that there was really nobody to blame. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances that wronged everyone involved. But that’s just my personal opinion, maybe even coping.
Regarding the state of marketing, I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong. You could be right that there’s no marketing knowledge on the team. You could also be wrong. Personally, I think that even the best marketing expert in the world would do exactly what the team is doing right now, nothing for the outside world to see. People here have wanted marketing to start for years, and if I take a brief look at where we are today, the team was right to hold off. You can only spend money once, and first impressions really do matter.
Let’s wait, see, and stay curious over the next few months. There should be a budget, and there should be a well thought out plan, but until the network is ready, it will be Schrödinger’s marketing plan.
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I really appreciate your input here and elsewhere on the forum. It’s fantastic to hear an inside perspective, and it’s encouraging to hear that you’re fired up & excited about what’s to come.
I understand why critique can feel personal when you’re so closely involved. It is a shame so few of the team are happy to engage here, though I can kind of understand why.
The critique here does not seem to be aimed at the technical team at all, but to contrast that while the tech side of things is progressing with great effort & good resourcing, it seems that there is a lack of corresponding product / marketing effort and resourcing, where a balance would seem more optimal to many in the community.
It’s really great to hear your input and positive perspective. I hope 2026 is an enjoyable year for you and the rest of the team that brings great satisfaction as you see the things you’re working so hard on start to come together 
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Some of the team is not.
I still hope that changes, as with any relationship, you can argue but it only really falls apart when the communication stops.
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